In 1928, Aldo Leopold left the U.S. Forest Service to take the lead in establishing a new profession of game
management, modeled on the profession of forestry. He began by conducting game surveys and authoring a
text for the new field. In 1933, he accepted a chair of game management with the University of Wisconsin
where he began to train a generation of leaders in the wildlife field. Leopold continued to develop
intellectually and in 1939, he transformed his course in ‘game management’ to ‘wildlife ecology.’ On the
fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Leopold’s Sand County Almanac we are pleased to offer
this new view of Leopold’s early teachings by Leopold biographer Curt Meine.
Reading the
Landscape:
ALDO LEOPOLD AND WILDLIFE ECOLOGY 118
n the spring of 1939 Aldo Leopold offered a new course, Wildlife Ecology 118,
at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. After joining the university faculty
in 1933, Leopold developed an undergraduate course that he called “Survey of
Game Management,” which he taught each spring from 1934 to 1938. But rapid
I
changes in the field of ecology, the practice of wildlife management, and the philosophy of conservation prompted
Leopold to overhaul and expand the earlier survey course.
Revamped and retitled, it was apparently the first course offered
in the United States—perhaps anywhere—under the designation “Wildlife Ecology.” The shift in title was significant. It captured fundamental changes in Leopold’s approach to the
emerging field and in the conservation movement in general.
The class drew forty-five students, ten more than its predecessor had at its peak.1 Among them was Lawrence Monthey, a
twenty-year-old soil science student from Wisconsin. Monthey’s
class notes have been preserved by his family and are now available to researchers at the Forest History Society. These notes
constitute the most complete extant record of Leopold’s instruction at a critical juncture in the evolution of his ideas. Moreover,
Monthey’s notes provide a student’s-eye view of a master professor at the very moment when an ecological approach to land
and wildlife management was first taking hold in academia and
in the conservation professions. As such they provide a valuable
benchmark against which to measure changes in the teaching
and training of wildlife biologists, other conservation scientists
and resource managers, and students in general.
LAYING THE GROUNDWORK
In the 1930s the midwestern land grant universities, the
University of Wisconsin in particular, were laboratories for
new approaches to agricultural and ecological science, land
conservation, and extension services. The regional landscape
was dotted with such innovators as Victor Shelford at the
University of Illinois, Paul Errington at the University of Iowa,
John E. Weaver at the University of Nebraska, and Paul B. Sears
at the University of Oklahoma. At the University of Wisconsin,
Leopold joined a faculty that included Richard T. Ely and
George S. Wehrwein in agricultural economics, Norman Fassett
BY CURT MEINE
FOREST HISTORY TODAY | FALL 1999
35
36
FOREST HISTORY TODAY | FALL 1999
PHOTO BY ROBERT C. OETKING, COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN ARCHIVES
in botany, and Chancey Juday in limnology. Leopold’s chair of
Game Management in the university’s Department of Agricultural Economics brought focus to an already rich capacity
in conservation and the natural sciences.
More generally, trends in ecology and the conservation professions were setting the stage for Leopold’s innovations.
Community ecologists were bridging the long-standing gap
between plant and animal ecology, a process symbolized by the
publication in 1939 of Frederick Clements and Victor Shelford’s
Bio-ecology.2 Shelford, through his work in the Ecological Society
of America, had begun to stress the scientific significance of preserved natural areas. Even before the Dust Bowl storms began
to blow (and in earnest afterwards), the voices of soil conservation—Sears, Hugh Hammond Bennett, Walter Lowdermilk—
emphasized the connection between soil erosion and
anthropogenic vegetation change. In the forests of the upper
Great Lakes, Raphael Zon and other forest researchers were
investigating the commercial and ecological viability of selection cutting systems.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Leopold made his own
revolutionary contribution, one that would have implications
for all the conservation fields. By connecting the dynamics of
“wild life” populations to the dynamics of their habitats,
Leopold triggered a tectonic shift in conservation’s intellectual foundations. In his landmark 1933 text Game Management,
Leopold effectively melded his extensive experience as forester
and game manager with the emerging ideas of scientific ecology, especially as outlined by Charles Elton in Animal Ecology
(1927). Game Management grew out of a series of lectures that
Leopold offered in early 1929 at the University of Wisconsin
before he formally joined the faculty. Game Management, in
turn, provided the basic framework for “Survey of Game
Management,” which he first taught in the spring of 1934.
Over the next two years, the field of game management
broadened into a more inclusive wildlife management movement.3 Changes in Leopold’s teaching agenda reflected this
expansion. In addition to the survey course, Leopold also offered
a short course in game management for young farmers. He
was disconcerted, however, by the degree to which even farm
children had lost their familiarity with wildlife. “Most farms
are devoid of wildlife,” he noted, “and the farm boy is just as
ignorant as if he came from town.”4 This was something of a
revelation to Leopold, and sensitized him to the need for a more
general introduction to conservation issues and ideas.
As early as July 1935, Leopold expressed concern that his
nascent academic program had “an important hiatus”: it lacked
“a general cultural course in conservation.” Neither the short
course nor the survey course was “particularly aimed at the student who may want to understand the conservation movement
simply as one of the qualifications for effective citizenship.”5
This sentiment may well have reflected the arrival of the Dust
Bowl storms earlier that spring (an event that coincided with
Leopold’s first use of the term “land ethic”).6 At the same time,
Wisconsin was passing its landmark conservation education law,
which mandated the teaching of conservation in all the state’s
public schools. “Wisconsin,” Leopold wrote in September 1936,
was thus “the first to see that the really basic problem lay in the
education of the public, rather than in the training of professional managers.”7
During 1939 Aldo Leopold taught the first class in Wildlife Ecology.
Leopold is shown here, in 1942, examining Hungarian partridge
specimens.
This presented an immediate dilemma for Leopold. His
time was limited, but the field needed both well-trained professionals and a better-informed public. He chose to focus his
professional instruction on a select few graduate students while
bringing the lessons of ecology and integrated land conservation to as broad a range of undergraduates as possible.8 In
a university report outlining this latter need, Leopold noted
that “the objective [of university instruction] should be to create a body of public opinion capable of critical support of conservation policies. The principal present defect in the
conservation movement is that public enthusiasm has outstripped public discrimination.”9
To meet this need Leopold hoped to develop, in partnership with other university experts, a unified course of study in
conservation. The effort came to only partial fruition, but it
did lead to the important appointment in 1937 of John T. Curtis
to the university’s botany department. Curtis, with Leopold,
Fassett, and horticulturist William Longenecker, would provide much of the faculty leadership for the unprecedented ecological restoration and research efforts at the university’s newly
established arboretum.10
Just as conservation’s pedagogical challenge was expanding, so was the professional niche of game management. When
he first joined the university, Leopold saw game management
as a discrete new field of conservation—an extension, in effect,
of agronomy, up the food chain. Through improvements in
the type and spatial distribution of cover vegetation, farmers
could produce a “crop” of wild game, to their economic, recreational, and aesthetic benefit. But his hopes for any achievement of this goal were soon tempered. By 1936 he would
describe the new field to his university overseers as “increasingly intermeshed with the whole gamut of land uses, land
problems, and land agencies.”11 He further noted that in focusing on the economic benefits of “game cropping” he had
underestimated landowner interest in other elements of the
landscape—”wildflowers, songbirds, fish, fur, etc.”
In response to these various needs, Leopold began to rethink
his own role as teacher. In a January 1938 memo he wrote, “The
university in general gets very little from me. The brief technical course in Game Management is not what it most wants or
needs. Ecology, geography, and policy would be more [to the]
point, especially for prospective teachers and private citizens.”12
A new course, “covering the whole wildlife field,” was needed.13
At first he thought to call the new course “Game Ecology and
Geography.” Through the spring and summer of 1938 he further refined the idea, finally adopting the title “Wildlife Ecology.”
In October 1938 Leopold prepared a course announcement
for prospective enrollees: “There is a growing demand for university courses in those aspects of ecology underlying conservation. To help meet this need there is offered a new course in
wildlife ecology.” The course had not yet been formally approved
by the university’s Faculty Committee on Courses but was soon
thereafter. At the same time, Leopold changed his own title.
Where he had always signed his correspondence “Professor of
Game Management,” he now shifted to “Professor of Wildlife
Management.”14
WILDLIFE ECOLOGY 118
Leopold defined a powerfully simple aim for the course: “to
develop the ability to read landscape, i.e., to discern and interpret
ecological forces in terms of land-use history and conservation.”
This meant something very different from technical instruction
in game management; the intent was to give students of wildlife
management and allied fields a context in which to understand
and build their technique. Leopold sought
a diverse audience. He hoped to bring in students from four not necessarily overlapping
groups. In his words:
1. Biologists who seek an antidote for
over-specialization in laboratory work.
2. Naturalists who seek to extend their
understanding beyond the identification of species.
3. Conservationists who wish to visualize the natural mechanisms which
conservation seeks to control.
4. Students in any field who wish to
understand how land-use determines
plants and plants determine animals.
Leopold’s version of the food chain shared with students in Wildlife Ecology 118.
Leopold limited enrollment to higherlevel undergraduates and beginning graduate students who were familiar with
common birds, mammals, and wild and
agricultural plants, but otherwise he established no formal prerequisites. Students
were required to do “a considerable
amount of library work,” as no single textbook—even Leopold’s Game Management—
covered the course’s subject matter.
Students were also required to attend
Leopold’s twice-weekly lectures and to participate in a half-dozen Saturday field trips.
The focus of the student’s efforts was an
“individual assignment in field work or reading.” After meeting with Leopold, the student was to select a project that would
“integrate the subject matter of the course
with the student’s major academic field…
or his major personal interest.” This allowed
Leopold to engage each student’s strengths.
“Thus,” he advised, “the agronomist or
botanist may be assigned a food-cover
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37
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ALDO LEOPOLD FOUNDATION ARCHIVES
survey; the landscaper a design problem in food and cover plantings; the entomologist or zoologist selected readings
on animal food habits; the history student selected readings in
conservation history; the biology teacher selected readings in
conservation teaching materials.” From the beginning, Leopold
sought through the course to establish “the role of wildlife in a
liberal education” (as he would entitle a 1942 article).15
Wildlife Ecology 118 convened on February 21, 1939. The
first section of the course, covering the first six weeks,
addressed “the structure and properties of animal communities.” In these lectures, Leopold explained basic principles and
concepts in community ecology, population biology, and autecology: food chains, biotic pyramids, trophic levels, breeding
potential, limiting factors, population density and dynamics,
carrying capacity, saturation, minimum populations, extinction and extirpation, population cycles, migration, other population movements, social organization, and animal behavior
and physiology. This amounted to a distilled version of his
prior survey course, now expanded to include a broader range
of species and habitat types.
Importantly, Leopold did not launch immediately into explanation of these organizing concepts but introduced them subtly. In his first three lectures, Leopold presented a series of
seven landscape case studies and three animal species “biographies.” Through the case studies, Leopold introduced his students to the art of reading landscape. They heard from one of
the art’s premier practitioners. The cases—”History of
Roadsides,” “History of a Prairie Coulee,” “History of the
Ragweed Patch, Faville Grove,” “History of Central Wisconsin
Marshes,” “History of Northern Wisconsin,” “Evolution of
the Fencerow,” “History of a Tussock Marsh”—covered communities and landscape features that would have been familiar to most students. But Leopold’s adept use of dynamized
natural history, which he saw as the hallmark of modern ecology, would have prompted them to look again. Using elegant
diagrams and clear text, Leopold walked them through landscape histories:
Leopold used a series of case studies to help students “learn to read
the landscape”, whether it was a fence row, a Wisconsin marsh, or
forest succession. Here, Leopold instructs student during the winter
at the Arboretum.
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FOREST HISTORY TODAY | FALL 1999
• Twenty years of incremental road improvements had
extinguished the remnant prairie flora, started a gully, and
killed a nearby bur oak, while “the landscape engineer in
charge of highway beautification plants an elm.”
• A century of haying, burning, ditching, and reflooding
had radically altered the central Wisconsin marshes, and
“the net effects of the ecological overturn are as yet by
no means clear.”
• The sequence of fencing—from fenceless field, to log
fence, to rail fence and hedge, to wire fence, to metal and
concrete fence, to electric fence—changed the vegetative
composition of field borders, altered the role of fire,
affected animal movements, reconfigured predator-prey
dynamics, and reduced floral and faunal diversity.
(“Ultimately …electric fences mean the complete subjugation of fencerow growths”).
Each case study concluded with a series of incisive questions. From the prairie coulee case study: “What is the meaning of the term “wheat gully”? When a watershed begins to
display floods and gullies, is the deterioration of the soil far
advanced or has it just begun? When pastured woods are closed
to grazing, does the original undergrowth reappear, or do we
get a new set of species? Why? Was the wooded area in 1870
greater or less than in 1840?”
Through the case studies, Leopold illustrated the “fundamental principle in all ecology”: the composition of the fauna
depends on the presence of plants, and the presence of plants
depends on the interaction of soils and human beings over
time. The three species “biographies”—of pheasant, bobwhite
quail, and great horned owl—stressed a similarly dynamic view
of populations: a given population has a certain breeding potential, and over the course of a year faces a series of environmental
contingencies that check its potential growth and determine
its final level before the cycle begins again. From the beginning,
Leopold included humans as “a part of the system, a part of
the animal community.” (To illustrate this, Leopold’s food chain
diagrams included such sequences as rock-soil-alfalfa-cowfarmer-grocer-lawyer-student.)16
Led thus gently to the understanding that landscapes and
populations change, Leopold’s students could more easily comprehend the then unfamiliar building blocks of scientific ecology. They would have quickly realized, too, that their professor
was after something more than rote memorization of ecological facts. Leopold had articulated this concern in a 1938 address
at the University of Missouri. In that address, entitled “Natural
History: the Forgotten Science,” Leopold criticized “the lopsidedness and sterility of biological education as a means of
building citizens.” He asked his audience to “go afield with some
typical bright student and ask him some questions. We can safely assume he knows how angiosperms and cats are put together, but let us test his comprehension of how the land is put
together.”17 Leopold was after perception, judgment, and insight,
while evoking enjoyment of the unfolding story of the land. “It
was a course,” Joseph Hickey later recalled, “in thinking.”18
In the next series of lectures, Leopold covered territoriality,
home range, edge effects, and plant succession, which together
with the previously covered concepts would “lead to an understanding of most ecological pictures.” Leopold focused in one
lecture on the types of
local ecological evidence
that can be helpful in
interpreting field sites: the
presence of particular
relict plant species; plant
growth forms and patterns of plant formations;
stump fences and farmstead plantings; bear
clawings, road scars, fire
scars, and ice scars. Later
in the course, Lawrence
Monthey summarized
“what you need to know
for ecological deduction”:
1. Animals and their
plant needs
2. Plants (at least
by sight)
3. Soil origin (geology, phys[ical]
geog[raphy])
4. Soils and
Agricultural practices (including silviculture, if any)
5. Administrative
Leopold’s diagram of land-use changes in northern Wisconsin shows the movement from forest to farm and
factors (plantings, back to forest.
poaching, laws
if any)
his prepared outline, but followed his general intent to expand
6. Local History (including archeology)
upon the course’s earlier themes and settings. Moving beyond the
7. Properties of diagnostic materials
local and known landscapes of Wisconsin, he shared with his stu8. Climatic history (hard winters, droughts, floods.)
dents his own field experiences from two very different regions:
the intensively managed forests of Germany and the semi-arid
That Monthey was absorbing Leopold’s lessons, and hon- wild mountains of the American Southwest and adjacent Mexico.20
ing his own perception, is evident from his choice of a case He devoted one lecture to the history of conservation, essentialstudy for a class exercise. “A very real case of plant successions ly building upon his opening chapter from Game Management by
came to me as I helped a resident of Lake Forest improve and comparing the “wildlife chronologies” of Asia, Britain, the
manage a rather large lawn. The fact that the whole story “Germanic Countries,” North America, and Wisconsin.
occurred in the brief span of 4–5 years makes it all the more
Leopold’s final lectures covered conservation philosophy,
interesting—and leaves it well in mind.” Leopold always appre- ethics, and economics. Unfortunately, Monthey’s notes from
ciated students who could find drama in even ordinary land- these sessions are rather scattered (end-of-spring-semester attenscapes; he would certainly have appreciated Monthey’s account tion spans being then, surely, what they remain today). However,
of the lawn’s “succession” (“ opening the [oak] stand . . . spelled we can glean from them basic elements of Leopold’s emerging
‘finis’ to the mosses which need a moist, shady, acid location”). conservation worldview. Monthey noted: “‘Flow of energy’ a
Leopold turned next in his sequence of lectures to a basic better term than ‘Balance of Nature’ in describing the biota.”
review of field techniques in wildlife management: censusing; Thus did Leopold long ago dispense with the “balance of nature”
trapping; banding; and determination of food habits, sex, and image that is in disrepute among today’s ecologists and postage. Leopold supplemented all his lectures with extensive lists modern socio-environmental critics.21 Under the heading
of supplementary readings, drawing upon his personal book “Conservation Motives,” Monthey wrote: “Conservation of one
and reprint library of some 3,000 titles. Literally and figuratively, resource at the expense of another.” Leopold was increasingly
Leopold provided access to the most current literature in the aware—and critical—of the tendency among conservationists
field. As the weather warmed through April and May, Leopold to treat separate components of the land rather than land as an
arranged field trips to several sites where his graduate students integrated whole. This would lead him, in the remaining decade
were carrying out research. In the field, students had the chance of life, to call directly and explicitly for “a reversal of specializato try out their newly acquired skills in landscape perception.19 tion; instead of learning more and more about less and less, we
In the final weeks of class, Leopold departed somewhat from must learn more and more about the whole biotic landscape.”22
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39
PHOTO BY ROBERT MCCABE, COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN ARCHIVES
Finally, Monthey’s notes refer to “A new motivation for conservation arising from 1. Our inability to define ‘value’ 2. Our
desire to mitigate the violence.” Here Leopold appears to be
referring directly to the text of his landmark essay “A Biotic View
of Land,” which he would deliver as an address just three weeks
later, on June 21, 1939, at a joint meeting of the Society of
American Foresters and the Ecological Society of America. “New
principle in conservation,” Monthey concludes: “let’s preserve
all of the elements of a landscape.” This expression of “protoconservation biology” tracks closely Leopold’s clear statement
in “A Biotic View of Land”: “The only sure conclusion is that the
biota as a whole is useful, and biota includes not only plants and
animals, but soils and waters as well.”23
Leopold’s students were in fact receiving the latest iteration
of Leopold’s evolving conservation philosophy, as expressed in
the forthcoming “Biotic View of Land.” Published later in 1939
in the Journal of Forestry, “A Biotic View” marked in many ways
the fulfillment of Leopold’s intellectual development over the
previous decade. Readers find Leopold exploring the same
themes that he developed in Wildlife Ecology 118: the need for
Leopold examining tamarack seedlings in 1947 approximately one
year before his death. He was after perception, judgement and
insight. His students would consider his course on wildlife ecology
a course “in thinking.”
40
FOREST HISTORY TODAY | FALL 1999
broader understanding of the structure and function of biotic
communities; the dynamic rather than static view of nature;
the “unprecedented violence, rapidity, and scope” of modern
human impacts on the biota; a comparison of human impacts
in different parts of the globe; and a call for all conservation
fields to converge and agree upon a new ecological foundation
for management decisions and techniques. In both the essay
and the class, Leopold was putting his intellectual pieces
together. His students, in fact, witnessed the formation of a new
conservation paradigm.
WHITHER WILDLIFE ECOLOGY 118?
Lawrence Monthey performed well in Wildlife Ecology 118.
His student paper on the “sky dance” of the woodcock earned
an A (Leopold called it a “first-rate job” and asked for a copy
to add to his woodcock file). Leopold’s evident respect for his
students comes through in other subtle ways. For one assignment, Monthey reviewed a 1938 article by Carl Sauer, “The
Theme of Plant and Animal Destruction in Economic
History.”24 With the cheekiness that is the special prerogative
of undergraduates, Monthey took both Sauer and Leopold to
task for their “attitude of wistful thinking for the ‘good old
days’ when nature was in tune.” “Personally,” he continued,
“I think that the young conservationists of today, the future
leaders who must face the critical problem of the near future,
must lose this sentiment and strive toward a new balance in
lieu of what has happened.” A knowing Leopold remarked in
the margin: “Good.”
The spring 1939 cohort of “young conservationists” experienced something of a golden moment in the development of
ecological instruction. When the course reconvened, in the spring
of 1940, the specter of world war already loomed. A year later
the United States went to war, and student enrollments began
to decline. Leopold continued to offer the course through the
war years, but to diminished numbers. At the height of the war,
only eight students signed up.
Enrollments began to recover in 1945, and Leopold was soon
forced to teach the course with assistants. Over the next three
years, the GI Bill swelled the campus with students. Leopold last
taught the full course in 1947. By then, Leopold had streamlined
the course somewhat. Much of the original substance of the
course was retained, but the basic structure had evolved. Leopold
continued to introduce the course with a basic overview of landscape composition and change, then moved into reviews of population ecology, Wisconsin-based wildlife ecology studies,
community ecology, and ecological case studies from other
regions. He seems actually to have downplayed the formal treatment of conservation philosophy, apparently choosing to weave
it into the larger fabric of the class (even as he working on the
final synthesis of “The Land Ethic.”)25
Upon Leopold’s death in April 1948, his former student and
newly hired colleague Joe Hickey took over the class. Hickey
continued to offer the course to new generations of conservationists into the 1970s. The course is still taught at the University
of Wisconsin by Dr. Stanley Temple, under the title Wildlife
Ecology 318: Principles of Wildlife Ecology.
But Leopold’s course is somewhat remarkable in the degree to
which it has withstood the buffeting of postwar-era changes in
academia and science. In many universities, whole organism biology—not to mention whole system ecology—has withered away
in the deep shadows of well-funded microbiology, molecular genetics, and biotechnology programs. Ecology, forestry, and the other
conservation sciences find themselves increasingly in the thrall of
powerful statistical models, computer-generated analyses, and
impressive geographic information systems. The type of “old-fashioned” natural history upon which Leopold and his generation
based their instruction is itself becoming endangered.
For conservation, the decline of natural history is not merely a matter of nostalgic regret but of real consequences. In a
recent discussion of this loss, conservation biologist Reed Noss
writes, “already the limiting factor in many cases is unavailabil-
ity of basic data on the life histories of species, interactions
among species, and ecological processes. How can we expect
[data] to be analyzed and interpreted with insight and wisdom
by people who have never seen the species in question and
scarcely ever take their eyes off the computer screen.”26 Noss
notes that even the field trip, “the core experience of any good
organismic biology or ecology course,” is becoming endangered
due to the cost of travel, liability concerns, and competing
demands on student time.
Yet, low rumblings of a counter-response can also be heard.
As traditional disciplines reinvent themselves, and new “interdisciplines” such as conservation biology and restoration
ecology carve out necessary academic niches, students are
MEASURING UP:
LAWRENCE MONTHEY
AND THE LAND ETHIC
n the dusty attic of his old farmhouse, Roger Monthey discovered
his father’s class notes from Aldo
Leopold’s first wildlife ecology
course offered at the University of
Wisconsin in 1939. Monthey, currently the Forest Stewardship Program
Representative for the USDA Forest
Service in Durham, New Hampshire,
graciously made these notes available
to researchers at the Forest History
Society.
Roger’s father, Lawrence (L. G.)
Monthey, was tragically killed in an
auto accident in 1985. Following his
days at the University of Wisconsin,
Monthey entered the U.S. Army during World War II, and after the war he
returned to Wisconsin, where he purchased 115 acres of woodland and
farmland near Madison in 1953. He
worked for twelve years as an editor
with the American Society of
Agronomy and later with the
University of Wisconsin Cooperative
Extension in Madison. In the later years
of his life, he was a wild foods expert
for the Environmental Resources Unit
at UW-Madison and conducted wild
plant and mushroom seminars
throughout the state of Wisconsin for
which he received wide recognition.
I
It is difficult to gauge how much
influence Leopold’s wildlife ecology
class had on Monthey’s subsequent
stewardship activities. Lawrence
Monthey, a soil science student at the
university, had a “Johnny Appleseed”
trait about him all his life, planting trees
wherever he went. After purchasing his
farm, he received each spring free trees
from the local Isaak Walton League and
planted them in shelterbelts to protect
the house from fierce winter winds. He
also applied for and received federal
assistance from the former Soil
Conservation Service and Agriculture
Stabilization and Conservation Service
(currently the Natural Resources
Conservation Service and Farm
Services Administration) to install ditches to reduce surface erosion from farm
fields and to let some of the fields go
fallow under the old Soil Bank
Program. He worked out agreements
with the farmers who leased his farm
fields to leave sodded waterways, to
retain vegetated fence rows, and eventually to apply low tillage planting
methods.
With regard to woodlot management and wildlife, Monthey’s biggest
achievement was to allow the natural
regeneration of about twenty acres of
COURTESY THE CAPITAL TIMES
BY ROGER MONTHEY AND KARIE KIRKPATRICK
Lawrence G. Monthey not only left
us his class notes from Aldo Leopold’s
first class on Wildlife Ecology, he left
a lasting legacy in those he helped to
understand and enjoy wild plants in
our environment.
trees, which at the time of the farm’s
purchase was blue grass pasture with
only a few bur oak trees. Today, this
area is a beautiful stand of red, white,
and bur oaks, shagbark hickory, and a
few planted black walnut and white
ash that provide habitat for whitetailed deer, wild turkey, cottontail
rabbits, and gray squirrels. Monthey
showed that time can heal the land,
and that forests and associated wildlife
communities can be restored that
once were just distant memories. Aldo
Leopold probably would have considered Monthey’s participation in these
activities as measuring up to his view
of a land ethic.
FOREST HISTORY TODAY | FALL 1999
41
being asked to reengage with their local landscapes. For these
students enrolled in courses bearing diverse labels in varied
departments, the primary objective of Leopold’s original
wildlife ecology course remains unshakably relevant. To understand the world they live and work in, students must “develop
the ability to read landscape… to discern and interpret ecological forces in terms of land-use history and conservation.”
This was the goal of Aldo Leopold’s teaching. To perceive
one’s place with critical insight, to peer into the drama of the
land’s workings, to understand one’s fellow creatures on their
own terms in their own worlds—these were the foundations upon
which not only training in conservation but also satisfaction in
life were to be built. In one of his last Wildlife Ecology 118 lectures, Leopold let his students know what to expect from him,
and from the land: “I am trying to teach you that this alphabet of
‘natural objects’ (soils and rivers, birds and beasts) spells out a
story, which he who runs may read—if he knows how. Once you
learn to read the land, I have no fear of what you will do to it, or
with it. And I know many pleasant things it will do to you.”27 n
Curt Meine, Research Associate,
International Crane Foundation.
NOTES
1. Aldo Leopold, “Chair of Wildlife Management, University of
Wisconsin,” 16 March 1939. Series 9/25/3, Box 1, Department of
Wildlife Ecology Papers, University of Wisconsin Archives.
2. Frederick E. Clements and Victor E. Shelford, Bio-ecology (New York:
John Wiley and Sons, 1939).
3. See Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 340–66.
4. Aldo Leopold, “Report of Chair of Game Management to
Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation,” 15 June 1937, Series
9/25/3, Box 1, Department of Wildlife Ecology Papers, University
of Wisconsin Archives.
5. Aldo Leopold, “Memorandum for Dean Christensen,” 29 July 1935.
Series 9/25/3, Box 1, Department of Wildlife Ecology Papers,
University of Wisconsin Archives.
6. See Aldo Leopold, “Land Pathology,” in The River of the Mother of
God and Other Essays by Aldo Leopold, ed. Susan L. Flader and J. Baird
Callicott (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 212–17.
7. Aldo Leopold, “Report to the Wisconsin Alumni Research
Foundation on the Chair of Game Management, 1934–36, 25
September 1936, Series 9/25/3, Box 1, Department of Wildlife
Ecology Papers, University of Wisconsin Archives.
8. Leopold, “Chair of Wildlife Management.”
9. Aldo Leopold (Chair, Committee on Wildlife Conservation), The
University and Conservation of Wisconsin Wildlife, Bulletin of the
42
FOREST HISTORY TODAY | FALL 1999
University of Wisconsin, Science Inquiry Publication no. 3,
February 1937.
10. Curt Meine, “Reimagining the Prairie: Aldo Leopold and the
Origins of Prairie Restoration,” in Recovering the Prairie, ed. Robert
Sayre (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, in press).
11. Leopold, “Report to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.”
12. Aldo Leopold, “Memo on Chair of Game Management,” 28 January
1938, Series 9/25/3, Box 1, Department of Wildlife Ecology Papers,
University of Wisconsin Archives.
13. Leopold, “Chair of Wildlife Management.”
14. Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work, 387.
15. Aldo Leopold, “The Role of Wildlife in a Liberal Education,” in The
River of the Mother of God, ed. Flader and Callicott, 301–5.
16. See Aldo Leopold, “The Role of Wildlife in a Liberal Education.”
17. Aldo Leopold, “Natural History: The Forgotten Science,” manuscript, 26 April 1938, Series 9/25/10–6, Box 16, Aldo Leopold Papers,
University of Wisconsin Archives.
18. Joseph J. Hickey, in Aldo Leopold: Mentor, ed. Richard E. McCabe
(Madison: Department of Wildlife Ecology, University of
Wisconsin), 49.
19. Invariably, the greater the number of students in Leopold’s class, the
more difficult teaching in the field became. Joe Hickey recalled that,
during the years he worked with Leopold, field trips “were somewhat marred by the high ratio of students per prof. [Leopold] was a
thrilling teacher to accompany in the field when the party was
rather small (say only four).” Hickey, in Aldo Leopold, 49.
20. Leopold’s reading of these landscapes can be found in a variety of
accounts. For Germany, see Leopold, “Deer and Dauerwald in
Germany: I. History,” Journal of Forestry 34:4 (April 1936), 366–375;
and “Deer and Dauerwald in Germany: II. Ecology and Policy,”
Journal of Forestry 34: no. 5 (May 1936): 460–66. For Mexico, see
Leopold, “Conservationist in Mexico,” American Forests 43: no. 3
(March 1937): 118–20.
21. Leopold’s explicit avoidance of the term and concept of “the balance of nature” dates to the mid-1920s. For his later discussion, see
Leopold, “A Biotic View of Land,” Journal of Forestry 37: no. 9
(September 1939): 727–30.
22. Aldo Leopold, in Round River: From the Journals of Aldo Leopold, ed.
Luna B. Leopold (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 159.
See also Aldo Leopold, “Conservation: In Whole or In Part,” in The
River of the Mother of God, ed. Flader and Callicott, 310–19.
23. Leopold, “A Biotic View of Land.”
24. Sauer’s essay was published in the November 1938 issue of the
Journal of Farm Economics.
25. See Hickey in Aldo Leopold, 47; “Wherefore Wildlife Ecology?” in The
River of the Mother of God, ed. Flader and Callicott, 336–37; Meine,
Aldo Leopold, 500–505.
26. Reed Noss, “Does Conservation Biology Need Natural History?”
Wild Earth 8: no. 3 (Fall 1998):10–14.
27. Leopold, “Wherefore Wildlife Ecology?”